Greg Mitchell | The Nation

It was ten years ago tonight that the Dixie Chicks, extremely popular then and far from controversial, caused a massive stir when singer Natalie Maines declared on stage in London: “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.”  It was a little more than a week before their fellow Texan launched a war based on lies.

Of course, hatred was quickly spewed in the Chicks’ direction by media types, political figures and country music yahoos—who never then or now get so excited when right-wing entertainers and media celebs make threats against a Democratic president.

Boycotts were immediately announced. Maines clarified two days later, “I feel the president is ignoring the opinions of many in the US and alienating the rest of the world.” But record sales and advance sales of concert tickets plunged.

You knew they had to be sensitive, even embarrassed about it, when The New York Times announced that it was dropping its popular “Green” blog at 5pm on a Friday. This is the traditional time for governmental and corporate entities to release bad news or offer massive document dumps.

The Times, back in January, had revealed that it was dropping its special reporting unit, or “pod,” on the environment, so concerns had already been aired. Still, this latest move, last Friday, drew criticism from readers, activists and media watchers.

Times managing editor Dean Baquet explains that, yes, this was a “cost-cutting” move but also claims that the inside view was that environmental coverage had become ghettoized and would benefit from being integrated with other departments. This might raise its profile and get more stories on the front page. I suppose this is the “It’s Not Easy Being Green” argument.

Last week, we had some fun with Bob Woodward’s ludicrous lie about a mythical threat from the White House warning him that he might find a horse’s head in his bed one morning (or something) if he kept getting the current budget and sequester debate wrong. But the issue of press malfeasnance on this subject is deadly serious. We’ve explored various angles on this in the past, but an incident this weekend perfectly reveals how the game has been played.

Last night, you could practically hear Paul Krugman cackling as he observed in a blog post at the New York Times site that, once again, he had been proven right and a certain critic wrong. But in this case, the wayward critic was not the usual know-nothing pundit or GOP congressman but the estimable Ezra Klein. Actually, Krugman was hailing Klein—for “manning up” and admitting he had been wrong in his latest Washington Post column.

Before we get to that, consider Krugman’s wider point:

Famed Washington Post reporter and author Bob Woodward has been the target of much praise from the right and scorn from the left this week, after writing an article for the newspaper fully blaming Obama for coming up with the idea of the sequester—and being most to blame for the current mess by not showing “leadership” in solving it.

Responding to the pushback from the White House and many in the media on basic facts and his analysis, Woodward summoned DC lap dogs from Politico, Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen, to his home to show them an e-mail from an unnamed top Obama official issuing what he called a “threat” to him (of the “or else” variety), which his visitors appeared to swallow whole. Woodward also warned that the president was becoming positively “Nixonian.”

Published at the Politico site, this obsequious report (the writers also backed Woodward’s view on Obama as bad guy in the sequester debate) drew wide mockery on the web last night, even from some on the right. The “threat” appeared no different from someone’s simply warning another that they might be embarrassed if they continue with their current line of action or thinking. This was it in its entirety: “I think you will regret staking out that claim.”